Currency conversion using PayPal on JNS (and other international sites)

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Currency conversion using PayPal on JNS (and other international sites)

I wanted to pass along a tip for those of you who have to deal with currency conversion when ordering from JNS (or other international sites) using PayPal. It might save you a little money, depending on your credit card company.

PP’s built in currency conversion can be a ripoff. From their website, “We receive a wholesale rate quote from our bank twice a day and add 2.5% to determine the retail foreign exchange rate to apply to transactions that involve a currency conversion”. So they charge you a 2.5% conversion fee on top of the wholesale rate they are getting, which hopefully is similar to the market or spot rates. You can do better.

PP offers you the option of doing the transaction in the vendor’s currency, with your credit card handling the FX exchange. You simply choose an alternate “funding source” when you are checking out.

Some credit cards don’t charge a markup on the exchange rates, saving you some money. Here’s a list of some US banks and what they typically charge:

Capital One – none

Discover – none

American Express – 2.7% fee (except for the $450 Platinum Card which has no fee)

Chase – 3% fee

Citi – 3% fee

Bank of America/FIA Card Services – 3% fee

Barclaycard/Juniper – 3% fee

HSBC – 3% fee

Wells Fargo – 3% fee

US Bank – 3% fee

Keep in mind not all cards issued by the bank have the same fee. You’ll need to look into your specific card. I use my CapitalOne credit card for all PP foreign currency purchases as well as when I’m travelling abroad – the savings add up. One final thing to keep in mind when using your credit card for a foreign purchase is that the actual conversion rate will be as of the post date, which might be a few days after you actually order.

You can see the retail exchange rates published by the credit card processors here:

Many banks in Australia charge intenational transfer fee on top of exchange rate when using credit card to buy stuffs from oversea. So I have found that using bank cash transfer to pay paypal is generally the cheapest option, only have to pay the conversion rate paypal is using; at least this is the case in Australia.

Many banks in Australia charge intenational transfer fee on top of exchange rate when using credit card to buy stuffs from oversea. So I have found that using bank cash transfer to pay paypal is generally the cheapest option, only have to pay the conversion rate paypal is using; at least this is the case in Australia.

For Australia, 28 Degress card has 0 fee and use mastercard official XE rate, which is really good

Just an update for Aussie buyers. I applied for, received, and have recently used 28 degrees card for one of purchase from Maxim and got 5.1898 DKK <-> 1 AUD for the rate from last weekend transaction. This is quite close to xe.com exchange rate of about 5.20 for the last weekend.

Cheapest option so far for oversea/online/paypal purchase, this is, by any mean that I have tried.